


Catch And Release

by Ladytalon



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Humor, Minor Violence, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3831973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladytalon/pseuds/Ladytalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breaking up is hard to do.  Seriously; it’s really, <i>really</i> hard.  <b>EARTH-14</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch And Release

Breaking up with someone is never easy, especially when the someone you need to break up with could snuff your life out without even noticing she’d done so. He's been putting it off for the past month but after this latest...mishap, the time has come.

He's asked her to meet him in the park, so that if she decides the occasion requires her to be five stories tall his apartment won't need remodeling done afterwards. With any luck at all, she’ll come in her civilian clothes so that she’ll be less likely to change size knowing that her outfit won’t grow when _she_ does. Arthur runs a hand through his hair nervously and looks around, wishing there were some way he could pass this duty on to someone else.

“Hey, you,” Giganta says from directly behind him, and he jerks in surprise. “Someone’s jumpy today.”

Arthur scrapes his teeth along his bottom lip, wondering just how he’s supposed to get the ball rolling (so to speak – hopefully his will stay right where they are). Every single time he’d rehearsed this in the mirror, his imagination had taken him to a place where he was hospitalized with internal injuries. “Hey, yourself,” he says awkwardly. She leans in for a kiss, and he tries to ignore the fact that it looks like she has some sort of animal print on the bra strap that’s showing beneath her shirt. It could be pure coincidence that it looks similar to her suit, after all. Still, he’d probably better ask. “Is that, uh, is that new?” Arthur gestures towards the strap vaguely.

“You can see it later,” she says with a wink.

Oh, God. He looks around again, wishing that the family having a picnic by the trees would finish up and head in their direction – surely she wouldn’t want to step on their pet dogs. Doris loves Schnauzers. “Um, Dory?” She smiles expectantly and he takes a deep breath, feeling like an asshole. “You know, this… this thing? Between us, I mean, not an actual _thing_ because I didn’t bring anything but myself here,” Arthur rambles, touching his fingertips to his forehead because it feels like he’s sweating. “Fuck, I’m no good at this. Um, what I mean is-”

The smile is slowly sliding off Giganta’s face. “You’re breaking up with me.”

Arthur watches her carefully for signs of growth that have nothing to do with extra hair. “It’s not, uh, technically a _breakup_.”

“What is it, then?” she asks.

“Think of it as more of a… pause,” Arthur says warily. “Or even ‘catch and release.’”

Doris looks at him as if he’s insane. “’Catch and release?’ Did you really just say that? Neither of us is a _trout_ , Arthur.”

“Imagine if we were, though, except the smaller trout was always in fear for its life because the other trout was a lot _bigger_ ,” He tries, and sighs when all she does is stare at him. “Jeez, Dory, _work_ with me here-”

“Is this about the other night?” she asks.

 _Finally_. “Yes, this is about the other night.”

Giganta narrows her eyes at him and Arthur starts thinking about possible teleportation destinations. “I said I was sorry. I apologized, and you accepted my apology.”

“I did,” Arthur admits. “I do. I know you didn’t mean it and that you’d try your best to make sure it never happened again…”

“But you think I’d do it again,” she says, and starts looking so upset that all he wants to do is put his arms around her. He’s not _completely_ heartless. “You don’t trust me, after all we’ve been through.”

“Aw, Dory.” Arthur shoves his hands in his pockets so that he doesn’t reach out for her because any affection shown now might undermine his resolve and give her the idea that he’s not completely serious. “I trust you; you know I do. It’s just… I’m not as young as I used to be and you’re, well, you’re pretty exciting.”

Doris is still looking at him as if he’s just vaporized a litter of kittens. “ _Exciting_.”

He hunches his shoulders and rubs the toes of his sneakers into the grass. “You’re a little too exciting for me, is what I’m trying to say. You know I love you, but-”

“ _Do_ you?”

Arthur looks back up at her. “Sure I do, only it’s not _love_ love. Not the kind I’m fairly sure that you want from me… I just can’t give that to you, and I’m sorry.”

She gazes at him silently for a long time and he’s shifting from foot to foot nervously before she sighs. “This is about _her_ , isn’t it.”

“Excuse me?” Of all the possible replies Arthur had thought he’d get, this wasn’t one of them. “Her who?”

“You know who I’m talking about, that bitchy glow worm you’re always going on and on about.”

Bitchy…? Oh. “You mean Kimiyo Hoshi? I don’t _go on_ about her,” he protests, though he’s slightly relieved that Doris is finally getting angry since that means she’s working through the stages of grief he’d been reading up on in preparation for this moment. Arthur just hopes her anger doesn’t include murdering him beside the petunias.

“Hey, if _that’s_ what you want out of life far be it from me to stop you,” she continues. “If you’re that much of a masochist, I hope you two are happy together. Did you take her out yet or is that your next stop after you’ve checked me off your list?” There’s no possible way she could know that he _had_ asked Kimiyo for a date, he thinks, unable to stop his eyes from widening slightly. Doris is apparently waiting for a tell like this, and he feels like the lowest form of scum when her eyes fill with tears. “I thought so.”

“It’s not like that-”

“Then what _is_ it like?” Giganta demands. “Let me tell you what it’s like for me – the man I’m dating calls me up and asks him to meet me in the park, so here I am thinking you have some sort of romantic surprise planned for me but when I get here…when I get here, you’re telling me you don’t want to see me anymore because you’re sooo scared I’ll accidentally crush you but you’re over here with your stupid hard-on for a member of the fucking _Justice League_ who wouldn’t give you the time of day if she was tied up in a clock museum! _That_ is _what it’s like for me_ , Arthur.”

This is a bit rich coming from someone who had just been seen feeling up the new Atom, and he tells her so.

“Oh, please. What kind of stupid gossip-”

“I was the one who saw it, Doris!”

“It was a _fight_.”

“It was a public handjob, is what it was. The entire street needed a fucking cigarette!”

They yell at each other some more and, sure enough, Doris gets so pissed that she starts to be a _very_ big girl. Her clothes don’t stretch with her and are immediately reduced to rags as she comes towards him. Arthur lifts off the ground to avoid being stomped on, and he flies up to hover at treetop level. “This is exactly what I mean – you let your emotions rule you and to hell with whoever gets hurt,” he shouts over at her.

Doris reaches for him with an enraged expression on her face, but Arthur backs off so the only thing she grabs is air. The wind from her hand’s passage is enough to make him tumble backwards, however, and his eyes widen in horror as he feels the seat of his pants snag on a branch of the tree she’s pushed him back against. Her smile is quite literally the biggest one he’s ever seen on anybody’s face and the sound of her laughter hurts his ears. “GO ON, LET’S SEE YOU GET OUT OF THIS ONE, ARTHUR!” Giganta roars at him. “FUCKING _ASSHOLE_.”

He struggles wildly to free himself and looks down to see quite a few people shading their eyes and looking up at them. Even the Schnauzer family has a ringside seat. Doris watches his unsuccessful attempts before she strides over, well aware that he’s not able to teleport because he’s still attached to the tree. “Typical, just _typical_ ,” he says as her hand closes around him. It smells like garlic. Arthur waits until she starts to squeeze him to retaliate, because he really _does_ love her… not enough to envision skipping through a field of flowers hand-in-hand, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean he wants to inflict bodily harm. Since she’s decided to make his internal organs into applesauce, he’d better do something to stop her.

Arthur powers up enough to burn her, sending a concentrated burst of light through his hands that makes Doris yowl in pain and let go. The motion sends him reeling but he’s _still_ attached to the goddamned branch and she’s getting ready to come at him again, so he does the only thing he can think of – he takes his pants off in order to escape. This is easier said than done; first he has to pull his legs up and throw his shoes down. They get stuck on lower branches, and Arthur flips himself upside down to start unzipping while Giganta takes another swipe at him. One of her nails inadvertently catches the back of his shirt and starts pulling him into a horizontal position so he gets a good look at how many people are still hanging around to watch before his brand-new, only washed three times shirt is ripped clean off his body and he rebounds against the tree with enough force to bloody his nose.

Perfect.

She bellows a few more insults about his shortcomings as a lover that are neither true nor very inventive, and Arthur uses this time to wriggle frantically out of his pants. By this time, he’s surfaced from his bout of blind panic enough to realize that as long as his feet are far away from the branch, he can just blast the hell out of it and get away. Of course, this is when Doris really hits her stride in regards to her depth perception (it always takes her a few tries when she’s this huge) and just wrenches the entire branch off of the tree. “Come _on_ ,” Arthur yells irritably.

He manages to free himself at the exact moment when she tries to pile drive him into the flowerbeds, and he wipes the redwood mulch out of his goatee as he staggers out from beneath the trees wearing only his socks and underwear. Arthur can’t see her, which means he doesn’t see the canoe that comes sailing down upon him and knocks him flat. “What the-”

“IS THAT ONE TOO _EXCITING_ FOR YOU?” She bellows from overhead. “HOW ABOUT _THIS_ ONE, JACKASS?” Another canoe (seriously, where the fuck is she getting _canoes_ from?!) rains down on him, but this time he’s more or less – mostly less - prepared and gets a shield up. A barbecue grill comes down next and nearly takes his head off, so he has no choice but to power up fully and get back up into the sky. Arthur didn’t bring his suit for the same reason he chose the park; he wasn’t supposed to need it… but now that he does and he _doesn’t have it_ , that means that the surface of his skin becomes so hot that his socks and underwear catch on fire. Now he’s mother-naked in public and extremely pissed off about it, two things that combine to make this day a little worse for Doris Zeul.

Arthur shifts his molecules so that his burning underclothes drop to the ground below, and then he draws enough solar energy to create an avatar of himself made of solid light. Even with the sun providing most of the _oomph_ , as it were, it’s still tiring because this is actually the first time he’s ever tried it. To conserve as much energy as he can, Arthur stays non-corporeal and simply shifts inside the huge avatar so that he’s able to animate the thing. From up here, it’s easy to see just how much area they’re using and how far back those damned bystanders really are – they’re not very far. He’s never been able to understand why people, once they see meta activity that could actually kill them if they don’t run from it, stay to watch like they’re at the Kentucky Derby. Of course it’s not hard to guess why they’re not farther back, because all that’s left are mostly males and Doris looks really great naked. Most of the members of their audience will have to go straight home and teach their kids about the facts of life after what they’ve seen here today.

In this form he has no vocal cords, but he _does_ make sure his avatar has pants on. Giganta comes crashing over to him looking more ticked than ever. “YOUR STUPID DICK STILL ISN’T BIG ENOUGH, SO QUIT TRYING TO KID YOURSELF,” she announces. Arthur sighs internally and racks his brain trying to figure out a way to get her to downsize. She hits him in the stomach and he’s slightly surprised that it actually _hurts_. He hits her back, she smacks him with a handful of canoes – and seriously, what is up with all these fucking canoes – and he uproots a tree to wallop her across the face with. When Doris figures out how tired he’s getting, she slams a golf cart into his left knee and despite the fact that the avatar isn’t _really_ him, it still manages to dump him on the bridge that’s been built over the duck pond. Water shoots up in a corona around ‘his’ body and the impact is enough to scatter the light particles holding Arthur’s avatar together, so he finds his atoms coalescing right there in the hollowed-out pond bed. A wayward breeze reminds him that yes, he’s still fully nude and half-buried in sludge with absolutely zero energy he can use to move – even after he regains his equilibrium and attempts to draw more solar power, his cells are so depleted that even blinking proves exhausting. 

The ground shakes as Giganta comes to murder him and at this point he’s wishing she’d just get it over with. “ISN’T THIS _EXCITING_?!?!?” she roars at him. His ex-girlfriend looms over him and decides that she’s going to sit on him; Arthur has never thought a giant vagina descending upon him would be the last thing he’d ever see but here it is and all things considered, it’s not a bad way to go. It’s really too bad he’s too tired for a quip about how big her ass is, because there will never be a better time for it.

Just as her enormous right cheek blocks the sun, he’s yanked from the pond and thrown clear. Arthur bounces a few times before coming to rest in the middle of some bushes, and he manages to flop onto his side in order to see that Wonder Woman is the one who’d tossed him to safety. It’s a little unfair that when he’s finally in the position of being helpless and naked around her, he’s too out of it to remember exactly which parts of him she’d actually touched when she was saving his life. Maybe he can embroider the truth just a tad when his friends hear about this – because they _will_ hear about it, he has absolutely no doubt about that. There still remains the slight hope that he can recover enough to sneak away with his reputation mostly intact, so Arthur concentrates on drawing as much energy into his cells that he can while still keeping an eye on the two women battling it out over the… oh, so _there’s_ where the canoes came from.

A few squad cars with lights on and sirens blaring come bumping over the greenway, but Arthur isn’t recovered enough to teleport away. He _does_ manage to weave an illusory disguise and drop it around his frame as he struggles out of the bushes. “Sir? Are you okay, sir?” one of the officers asks. “Have you been hurt?”

This day just keeps getting worse for him – the woman touching his arm in concern is the same officer who’s arrested him at least twice before. She also has a very personal reason to hate supervillains in general. How the hell did she get transferred from Keystone City? Arthur grinds his teeth in frustration, wondering how the hell he’s going to get out of this one. “No, I was just on my way home when I came across… _that_.”

“We’ve got the paramedics up at the picnic shelter, so let’s get you checked out,” Officer Jackham says and he has no choice but to come with her, because she’ll figure out that something is wrong if Arthur refuses. They’re only steps away from the gaggle of EMTs – and a concealing blanket, because don’t ‘innocent bystanders’ always get one of those? – when Arthur stumbles slightly and Julie takes his arm to steady him. “Hang on a second,” she says, and his eyes widen in dawning horror because she’s just touched bare skin when he’s supposed to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt. _Shit_.

Arthur starts backing up, wondering just how far he could get if he started running. His badge-wielding nemesis places one hand on her sidearm and reaches out to put the other hand flat on his chest. “No sudden moves,” she barks, and focuses on his jawline. “I’d better not find hair on your chin.” He sighs, and she draws her gun. “Drop it, Light. _Now_.”

He does as ordered while shifting his hands to preserve what little dignity he has left, and a chorus of startled shrieks rings out. “Hey, Julie. Mark says hi.”

She blinks and gives him a once-over. “Hands where I can see ‘em.”

“There’s women and children present,” he reminds her.

“Great. They can see what a peeled shrimp looks like – hands where I can _see_ them.”

“C’mon, Jules-” Julie abruptly leans forward and smacks the butt of her gun against his nose, which is still sore. “Aagh, _fuck_!”

His hands lift to his face, which ignites another round of screams. Haven’t these people ever seen an actual penis before? Ridiculous. “You’ll address me as _Officer Jackham_ or not at all,” she warns him, then adds insult to injury by giving him another look-over. “You know? She was right, it’s not that big.”

“I’m a grower, not a shower,” Arthur protests. “C’mon, let me have a blanket. It’s not my fault I’m naked, and you’re giving me grounds to sue because I’m not even under arrest.” Yet.

“Yet,” she says, reading his mind. “Fine. I’m watching you, so don’t try to go anywhere.”

“If I’m not under arrest _yet_ , I’m under no obligation to stay _here_ ,” he says sweetly. “That’s the magic of not being under arrest.” He gets his blanket as well as medical treatment from a tech that keeps shaking his head and muttering how wild this entire day has been. “You have no idea,” Arthur tells the man as the last bandage gets taped on. “This all happened because I broke up with-”

Officer Julie Jackass abruptly resurfaces with a triumphant look on her face and handcuffs in her left hand. “ _Gotcha_ , asshole.”

What the everloving… “ _FUCK!_ ” Arthur yells, flinging himself backwards on the gurney like a toddler having a tantrum. He just _had_ to make small talk. God _damn_ it.

The cuffs click closed on his wrists as Julie’s face appears in his field of view. “Doctor Arthur _Light_. You’re under arrest for disturbing the peace, destruction of public property, unauthorized metahuman activity in the state of New York, and multiple counts of public indecency as _well_ as disorderly conduct and use of profanity around all those women and children you were so concerned about earlier.”

Arthur gets hauled off to her car where Wonder Woman and Doris are waiting for him, and Thymiscera’s favorite daughter comes over to take a look at him after she ties her prisoner to the door of the police car. “Hello, Arthur – it’s been a while,” she greets him with a smile.

His blanket takes this opportunity to slide right off his shoulders, and he heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Hi, Diana.”

“Goodness.”

“My eyes are up _here_ , Diana!”

“Why the hell would she want to see _your_ tiny wet noodle-”

“ _Fuck you, Doris_ ,” Arthur roars at her.

Giganta rips the entire door of the patrol car off and tries to hit him with it. “I already did but you couldn’t handle the _excitement_ , you fucking wimp!”

The other officers on the scene rush to separate them, as if he’s just going to charge into the fray without any clothes on; he’s content to hurl abuse at her from a safe distance, thank you very much. Diana takes pity on him and goes off to find his pants after giving his dick another appraising glance that makes him shout at her to quit looking at it. All these women's belittling comments and amused glances would be enough to give him a complex if he were a less confident man. 

He gets his pants back, thank god, and then Julie sticks him in the back of the same car that _she_ is in. Arthur stares straight ahead at the black wire cage separating the backseat from the front. “Good _job_ , Doris. A-fucking- _plus_.”

“It serves you right,” she says. “You might be a genius, but you’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met.”

“In your case, that’s gotta be pretty damned big,” Arthur muses. 

He looks over at her, she looks over at him, and suddenly they’re both laughing so hard that a few of the officers bend down to look through the windows at them. “Did you see that guy flying kites down by the footpath?” she asks, wiping at her eyes. “We’re going out next Friday.”

Giganta has never been one to waste time, Arthur thinks with no small amount of admiration. He’s running for his life, and she pauses in the midst of attempted murder to line up a date. “Good for you. You didn’t step on any of those dogs, did you? I thought I saw Schanuzers.”

“Ooh, my favorites! You should’ve said,” she sighs wistfully. “They’re so _cute_.”

“If you say so.”

Their conversation is interrupted as Julie gets in the front and Arthur leans against the window, easing his wrists in the cuffs. Doris looks over at him again and picks up where she left off. “Well, I mean they’re not too _exciting_ , but-”

“ _Stop_.”


End file.
